Decluttering: key to knowing your stuff

How often do you run around the house looking for one specific thing and can't find it to save your life?  I have and often wade through all sorts of space-sucking stuff to find it.  Not to mention the time and frustration wasted when a part of your mind is saying, "if you had put it away in the proper place, you wouldn't be in this mess or late for work."  Yeah, but who has the time to schedule when they are going to clean, organize and get rid of junk that's just taking up room?

That's what I love about this calendar!  It is a pre-scheduled decluttering calendar for 2012 breaking up the overwhelming task of major organizing and cleaning into bite sized chunks.  There are even scheduled days off!  It's a practical concrete way of simplifying and destressing one's living space and mind.

Once you know what you actually have from removing excess useless stuff it will be:
a) easier to find it
b) easier to stay organized and
c) most if not all the good things about simplifying one's life including being environmentally friendly, less stressed, have more time etc.

Simple Living pledge...

Wow it's February already so it's time for the Simple Living Pledge!  Since I'm swamped with work(s) and who best to properly introduce the idea but the person behind the inspiration, I will link to Kanestrand's blog: Simple Living Step 1.  Lovely blog with lots of information about living sustainably, green and simple!

Enjoy!

Till we meet again, anon.

Great ways to start

If you want to start to be more sustainable in your life you need to start with a baseline.  You need to know what you already do this sustainable (good for you!) and what areas could become more sustainable.   A pretty comprehensive 'green' quiz available to determine your baseline is from Practically Green, a website and blog dedicated to educating people about simple easy things (they call 'Actions') to do to be more green.  I took the quiz and I was very impressed with the breadth and thoroughness of the topics.  After you take the quiz they even have a promising incentive program to continue and increase one's sustainable practices.  I highly recommend checking them out and taking 'how green are you?' quiz!

Another great way to jump right in to change your behavior towards a more sustainable lifestyle is take The Simple Living Pledge. I recently learned about this pledge from the blog My Plastic-free Life (formerly known as fake plastic fish) and went to the link she provided to learn more about it.  I had been reading about simple living lifestyles in my research about personal sustainability and wanted to know what exactly it is.  Well, I was not disappointed.  The page on the blog Kanelstrand goes into what a simple lifestyle is, what the pledge is (starts in February and lasts 3 weeks officially), and the best part?  Anyone can do it!  You don't have to have a website, a blog or even an email address to pledge. 

Join me and take this pledge if only for the month of February!